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I heard this inspirational story the other day and thought you might also enjoy it.

One day, a professor told his students they were going to have a surprise quiz. He handed out the quiz, placing it facedown on each student’s desk. He then asked the students to turn over the paper. To everyone’s surprise, there were no questions – just a small black dot in the center of the paper. The professor told them, “I’d like you to write about what you see on the paper.” The students looked very confused but completed the project. At the end of class, the professor read each response out loud. Every single student wrote something about the black dot, either explaining its size or position on the page.

Then the professor said, “I’m not going to grade you on this, instead, I just wanted to give you something to think about. No one wrote about the large, white portion of the paper. Instead, everyone focused on the tiny black dot. The same thing happens in life – we tend to focus on only the black dot – whether it be a frustration or problem, a fight with a friend, the lack of money, or other issues. In reality, the dark spots are tiny when compared to the blessings in our lives, yet they tend to monopolize and pollute our lives.

Here’s the way I see it: When you focus on problems, you will have more problems. When you focus on possibilities, you will have more opportunities. We’d love to offer a creative solution for your next challenging printing project. And remember, other printers may be nearby, but nobody comes close.

There are some powerful software suites available today that will help you bring your idea to life, but few are as well-designed for print as Adobe InDesign.

At first glance, you might be a bit intimidated by the large number of buttons and gadgets you’ll see within the software. These InDesign best-practice tips will help you be successful when you’re ready to send your creation for printing. From starting with the end in mind to ensuring that
all of your styles are correctly formatted for printing, you can leverage the power of InDesign to create print-ready pieces that you will be proud to share with your customers.

Begin at the End

InDesign has a fantastic feature called “Live Preflight.” This tool allows you to see any problems that your printer will find with the file before you send it. While designers traditionally would have to manually check their files for errors, or discover issues only after the output has been delivered for printing, Live Preflight helps catch things like missing fonts and images that are improperly linked upfront.

Thread That Text!

“Threading” your text allows you to flow content from frame to frame, making it much simpler to make changes to the size of text boxes and other page elements. Instead of being a bunch of disconnected paragraphs, this creates a more cohesive story that can evenly break across pages. Magazine designers use this cool functionality a great deal as they’re writing longer-form content, but it’s helpful even for smaller projects such as postcards or flyers, too.

Keep Your Formatting Consistent

If you’re not careful, you may find that your fonts, sizing, and colors are losing consistency throughout your printed piece. It can be pretty tough to see this before sending it for printing. The best way to maintain that consistency is through creating styles for all your formatting. If you’re used to highlighting a block of text and applying a different font or color – break that habit! Creating styles that represent the look that you’re trying to accomplish and then applying those styles to similar text blocks makes it easy to make global changes to text in the future.

One-Level High, Please

Stacking objects on top of one another may seem like an easy way to create advanced looks within your file, but this can cause some problems down the road. InDesign pros know that stacking objects is sometimes required, but should be avoided whenever possible to make it easier to shift items around on the page.

While we’re all familiar with upselling and cross-selling to boost sales, few salespeople will practice down-selling. Although your higher-priced items likely have a more substantial profit margin, down-selling can be just as, or more, important to your company.

Down-selling is a great sales technique to show your customers you have their best interests in mind. For example, if you think a customer is considering an overly featured product that has no value for their simple needs, down-selling can be a great way to build rapport with a customer and still get a sale.

Down-selling can also be used as a backup if customers reject your original offer or have budgeting issues. For example, you can suggest a comparable product or service at a lower price that better matches their budget or needs. If you haven’t already, this is an excellent example of the importance of categorizing your products when possible, ranging from value/entry level to premium.

Down-selling is a great way to keep the customer engaged in the sales process. In addition, if a customer trusts you and appreciates your honesty, they will likely purchase from you again in the future, creating a loyal customer. After all, a satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all.

Promotional labels are a fun way to make engaging promotions you can stick almost anywhere. Not only are they affordable and unique, but they are also often a crowd-favorite at trade shows and other company events.

Promotional labels are available in a variety of shapes, sizes, durability, and colors/finishes, such as square, circular, or die-cut, as well as embossed, laminated, or foil printed. They are also designed for easy handling and can be created as individually cut labels or rolled labels with a scored backing for easy distribution.

In addition to handing them out, promotions labels can be applied to marketing materials and packages as a way to grab attention and spread the word about a new product, or upcoming sale or event.

Let us know if you’d like help designing the perfect promotional labels that will look as polished and professional as your brand.